Aaron Sorkin needs to brush up on his dialogue on gender parity in Hollywood

Sign up for our free newsletter

Speaking at Tribeca Innovation Week in New York City, Sorkin stepped into the fray that is gender politics when he was asked about female protagonists on screen.

Maybe writer Aaron Sorkin needs to take a few of his famous walk-and-talks with some women working in Hollywood. The "Newsroom" creator recently flubbed his dialogue addressing gender parity when it comes to roles on screen.

Speaking at Tribeca Innovation Week in New York City, Sorkin stepped into the fray that is gender politics when he was asked about female protagonists on screen.

"When 52 percent of the movie ticket-buying public are female, but only 15 percent of the protagonists are, it doesn't seem like commerce is actually winning," an audience member said to Sorkin, according to the New York Observer.

"These decisions aren’t made entirely by men. There are roughly as many women who can green-light a film in Hollywood as there are men," responded Sorkin. "The trick is there just need to be more good scripts that have the kind of characters you're looking for."

Sorkin went on to name a couple female studio heads, such as Amy Pascal and Stacey Snider who have the capacity to green-light blockbusters.

But clearly Sorkin hasn't been paying attention to the actual numbers when it comes women in Hollywood. While Sorkin may have regular dealings with female execs, it doesn't mean that experience is representative of the industry at large.

Earlier this year, the annual Celluloid Ceiling report showed that just 16 percent of behind-the-scenes personnel on the 250 highest-grossing films of 2013 were women, down from 18 percent in 2012. And of those top 250 films, only 25 percent of producers were female.

Gina Hall is a Los Angeles-based writer and producer with more than 10 years experience in television, documentary and feature film production. She is a graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and blogs for the Huffington Post at huffingtonpost.com/gina-hall